Text/Zhao Jiahe
Edit/Gale
Recently, a video of the former President of the British House of Commons giving Jiaran a birthday wish suddenly exploded on Station B, which has reached more than 4 million views so far.
The video shows a white-haired old British gentleman meticulously offering blessings to a Chinese virtual idol, which looks a bit of a magical reality, and according to the owner of the video, it only cost him 100 pounds to invite a British politician.
Source B station up master @ I can also eat a salmon
The video also quickly led to a wave of overseas celebrity blessings. Many netizens traced the source and found that these channels came from an overseas App called Cameo, and the main business was star blessing video customization. Users who spend anywhere from $5 to $3,000 on Cameo can get customized shouting short videos from celebrity groups such as actors, influencers, athletes, creators, reality TV stars, etc., including blessings from various scenes.
It is worth mentioning that there are actually platforms in China that imitate its model, but compared with the current boom in overseas star video, domestic stars are quiet.
Copying overseas, short-lived
In fact, the business model of celebrity blessing customization has existed for several years, even in China, it is not a new thing.
The overseas Cameo team was founded in 2017, and at the beginning it grasped the "fan economy" and became popular by riding the east wind of short videos. The way to make a profit is also very simple, the platform will extract 25% of the cost of each transaction.
By the end of 2018 alone, more than 100,000 deals had been made on Cameo. In June 2019, the transaction volume of 300,000+ videos was processed on average 2k+ videos per day, and the group of celebrities settled reached 15,000, including superstars such as Snoop Dogg.
By the time it raised $100 million in Series C funding in March 2021, Cameo already had more than 2 million videos on it and the company was valued at $1 billion.
Image source: Cameo
New businesses that are so popular overseas certainly can't escape the eyes of domestic entrepreneurs.
In October 2018, an App called "WishR StarShare" was launched, and the founder Lei Tao had previously been responsible for products such as second beats, small coffee shows, and a live broadcast. Its model is also basically copied from overseas Cameo, mainly for the customization and sale of celebrity blessing videos.
Image source: Sky Eye Check
In 2019, the news of "Zhao Zhongxiang's clear price tag of 4,000 yuan" was broken, which quickly triggered heated discussions. At that time, the report on the clear price of celebrity blessings almost became a trend of screen brushing, and also brought a lot of heat to WishR StarShare. At that time, there were more than 200 stars on the platform, actors, singers, Internet celebrities, and various types: "Mainly the elderly, the price ranges from thousands to hundreds of thousands." "There are many big stars like Ge You.
But what about the app, which was originally called "an online direct platform that links celebrities and users"?
Since huawei and other Android software markets can no longer search for this software, Zinc Finance can only find its regular download channels in the Apple store and official website. At the same time, it was found in the Apple store that WIshR My StarShare is currently in a state of basic deactivation, and the last version update stayed a year ago; the last two of the total 30 reviews are still bad reviews.
After a short period of curiosity, it has been forgotten by the public. According to Qimai data, WishR StarShare has an estimated total of only 202 downloads in the past year.
Image source: Seven-wheat data
The blessing of a star who has become a popular outlet overseas, but after coming to the domestic market, he is not satisfied, and this business is finally drawn to a failure. However, although the model is similar, from all aspects of the specific point of view, the reasons for the failure can still be glimpsed.
Old stars, outdated business
Lei Tao, the founder of WishR StarShare, said in an interview with Tiger Sniff in 2019, "If it weren't for the article (Zhao Zhongxiang incident), you probably wouldn't have known you could be so close to the star." ”
In his view, this business is a substitute for the star's "cave walking".
For some second- and third-line small stars, because resources are often concentrated in the head, they have no high-quality channels, and can only look at the "sinking market", the most typical is to go to some small counties to perform "caves". The emergence of celebrity blessings, although the income is not as good as small business performances, but only need to shoot a video of more than ten seconds at home, the cost is greatly reduced.
Because of this, most of the domestic platforms are those who have gradually forgotten past stars, and the quotations are often above five digits. For example, Lin Miaoke, who still hangs a photo of his childhood, the unit price of recording a blessing video is also more than 90,000 yuan.
Image source: WishR Starbucks
The difference between the personal version and the business version of 90,000 yuan and 95,000 yuan is more obvious, and the target group is those who need to advertise.
This kind of "cave-walking" idea of making quick money is the biggest difference between the domestic platform and Cameo, and it is also one of the biggest problems.
The reason why Cameo can be done is precisely because of the "fan economy", consumers buy interaction with their beloved stars, not all vanity and face; at the same time, stars gain in addition to money, but also the influence of video dissemination. Official data shows that about 80% of videos are purchased as gifts by individual users.
The team has also said that Caemo's pricing is not high, but after the explosion of video volume, social media sharing will amplify the company's brand effect, which is free advertising for the company, so Cameo will prioritize transaction volume.
Therefore, although most of the celebrities in the Cameo platform are tepid, the price is generally not high, and rarely exceeds the five-digit yuan. At the same time, each celebrity homepage has a clear display of reference information such as evaluation and star rating, focusing on the user experience of individual consumers.
The actual positioning of domestic platforms shows that this cannot be done. On WishR My Starbucks, there are very few personal video cases, and most of them are advertising videos for businesses.
Abandoning individual users also abandons communication, and naturally cannot reproduce the overseas star blessing boom.
On the other hand, even if domestic users want to spend money to buy blessings, those who have been stars are not the best choice. In the blessing video fever set off on the B station, in addition to overseas stars, the most left is the Internet celebrity group.
Most of them were the first batch of "earthy Internet celebrities" in the short video era, with a variety of "whole life" that beat out of place, and their popularity was even worse than those who had been Internet celebrities. The most important thing is the price, most of the unit price of such Internet celebrities' blessing videos is 50 yuan to 200 yuan, compared with the price of tens of thousands of stars, the choice of consumers is self-evident.
Merchant promotion, market hidden dangers
In fact, in the case of difficulty in reaching out to individual consumers, it is not without opportunities to focus on brand needs to make an advertising and marketing platform. Just using the blessing video as a gimmick for commercial promotion may bring some more serious related legal problems.
It is understood that although the WishR StarShare App is divided into a commercial version and a personal version, the commercial version needs to provide various qualification materials for placing orders.
But at the same time, Zinc Finance also found that there is no obvious definition between the two, and brand merchants can still receive videos in a personal version.
So assuming that the blessed brand has quality problems, does the star who sent the blessing need to bear the corresponding responsibility?
In accordance with Article 62 of the Advertising Law, if a recommendation or certification is made for goods or services that have not been used, the advertising spokesperson shall be confiscated by the administrative department for industry and commerce of the illegal gains and shall be fined not less than one time but not more than two times the illegal gains.
And can the stars who have only recorded a blessing video be considered endorsements?
Some media have consulted relevant legal people on relevant issues, and the answer is yes. When celebrities send personal blessings to users, it is only a contract method, a normal form of equal remuneration; but when cooperation is aimed at enterprises, because stars have celebrity effects, they are actually using a pan-advertising language and a positive statement to imply or make it clear that the product should be widely promoted by the outside world, which is essentially an act of advertising endorsement.
It is precisely for this reason that many celebrities such as Qiao Shan and Luo Jiaying, who have settled on the platform, are secretive about this kind of business, saying that "there is no such cooperation".
In addition, this type of software has also been suspected of reselling foreign videos to make a difference. In WishR Starshare, there are also overseas star businesses, and the quotations of overseas stars above are far more expensive than Cameo.
For example, tom Felton, an actor who played Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, has 70,000 fans on Cameo, and the unit price of the personal version is 4684 Hong Kong dollars or about 3786 yuan.
On the domestic platform, he was listed at a high price of 6600 yuan, nearly doubled.
This, in turn, raises the question of specific profit models. Unlike Cameo's open and transparent 25% commission, neither WIshR founder Lei Tao nor platform customer service has ever revealed a relevant message in reports and interviews.
It can be seen that in order to truly make celebrity blessings into a really good business, the domestic market today still lacks specific norms and regulatory systems.
The second explosion of celebrities in the online world to bless the business is an entertainment carnival for consumers, and it is also a sinking attempt of stars to seek gold. In the case that the domestic business model was not mature before, it was obvious that both ends were not flattered; it is undeniable that this business has its own reasons for prosperity, but it is still unrealistic to replicate the success of overseas Cameo.